Late Career Change: Never Too Late to Reinvent Yourself

EDITOR’S NOTE: In recognition of National Doctors’ Day, coming up at the end of the month, starting Monday, March 25, MedLearn Media will be honoring five individuals with profiles of their fine work in the field of healthcare and medicine. Today’s honoree is Stephanie Van Zandt, MD.

Somehow, some way, when she was in high school, Stephanie Van Zandt knew she wanted to be a doctor. But more than just a doctor – specifically, she wanted to be a pediatrician.

So off to medical school she went. And that’s where a certain phrase was being heard repetitively, in classrooms, in hallways, and in the clinics: “pediatrics: lots of poop and no loot.” An outpatient pediatric rotation quickly confirmed that statement but by then Dr. Van Zandt had found her true path after delivering her first baby.

A yearning for lifetime scientific learning led her to her chosen career, obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN). For Van Zandt, the combination of primary women’s care and surgery and obstetrics seemed to align with her career interests. But overshadowing all those aspirations was her deep-rooted need to care for others.

“I had the privilege of practicing OB/GYN in a single-specialty group for 25 years,” she recently told RACmonitor. “But (I) had to retire and reinvented myself into (a) full-time administrative physician as a medical director in charge of my healthcare system’s physician advisor services.”

Today, Dr. Van Zandt is the medical director/physician advisor services for Baycare Systems in Clearwater, Fla. Dr. Van Zandt also serves in the system’s utilization management/complex managed care denials.

She is also the vice co-chair for the NPAC, the National Physician Advisor Conference (NPAC), being held at the Loews Coronado Bay Resort in San Diego. The four-day event runs from April 15 through April 18.